Sunday, March 14, 2010
A+E, Theater, Reviews
Out of place
Music, casting keep ‘Our Town’ at a distance
Daniel May, Bethany Anne Lind and Eugene Russell IV
Horace Henry
"OUR TOWN”
True Colors
Southwest Arts Center
877-725-8849
www.truecolorstheatre.org
Through March 21
BY BERT OSBORNE
Every time I see another production of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town”—and artistic director Kenny Leon’s True Colors staging is the third in six years—I’m reminded of Edgar Lee Masters’ “Spoon River Anthology,” a similarly themed meditation on American life and death at the turn of the last century. The book (written in 1916, decades before the Wilder classic) is an assemblage of monologues by occupants of the town cemetery, who, like the dearly departed characters at the end of “Our Town,” comment wistfully on those they left behind, loved ones too blind and ignorant to truly realize life while they’re still living it.
For what it’s worth, Charles Aidman adapted “Anthology” for the stage in the 1960s, incorporating original folk music (songs indicative of the ’60s, to be sure, and yet unobtrusive to the time frame of the play). I saw it my freshman year in college, more years ago than I care to reveal, but I’m man enough to admit it was a seminal theatergoing experience (cliché be damned): the first show that moved me to tears. That I’ve been to countless “Our Towns” since then—not one of them called Spoon River—just doesn’t seem fair.
Meanwhile, back in 1901 Grover’s Corners, Leon infuses his version of events with music, as well. A couple of intermittent medleys feature lively, anachronistic renditions of everything from Jim Croce to Stevie Wonder. That’s different, and the point is...? The actors appear in modern dress, although their characters exist in the same predated time and place they always have. The cast also happens to be interracial—biracial, more accurately—a conceit that might be “flying in the face of custom,” as Wilder puts it, but that never really flies. An all-black “Our Town” could be interesting; in its own context, however, Leon’s mix feels vague and arbitrary at best, and at worst defies logic or sense.
Like the various members of the play’s two families, theoretically, it’s up to the audience not to notice the “colorblind” casting. But how can we miss it, when Leon essentially calls it to our attention? There’s nothing blind about it. Deliberately divided along racial lines, the Webbs (Mark Kincaid, Jill Jane Clements, Bethany Anne Lind) are white, and the Gibbses (Neal Ghant, Donna Biscoe, Eugene Russell) black. (Colorblind would be casting Kincaid and Biscoe as one couple, and Ghant and Clements as the other, wouldn’t it?)
More effectively, Leon also splits the role of the Stage Manager, the host of our story (quite personably performed by white Daniel May and black Ellis Eugene Williams). Even so, there’s a hollow ring to it, as opposed to an ironic twist, whenever one of them starts waxing profound about social injustice and inequality.
Aside from the racial element, some of the casting isn’t very age-appropriate, either. Ghant and Russell as father and son? It’s conceivable that Russell may be the older of the two—his movements and mannerisms suggest a youthful exuberance—and yet he does little to alter his naturally deep, fully matured voice. As the innocent, ill-fated girl next door for whom he falls, the lovely Lind registers as the undisputed standout among the ensemble.
Leon takes industrious advantage of his Southwest Arts Center space, occasionally planting actors in the audience, having them roam the aisles or carry on conversations from the back of the theater—turning our heads literally, when a lot else fails.
SP